Inflation

[rufus]

WOW! Gold dropped about thirty dollars in the early hours of this morning. It is now 1,501.60. There must of been some massive selling by some government entity. Someone, somewhere is really raking in the cash.

Rufus

 

[Dunkopf]

We're lucky here in Colorado. We only have one toll road and it is run by a private corporation. So our government can't be greedy with our tolls. The corporation that owns the toll road gets to be greedy instead. They do pay our state to plow it but maintenance is provided by the corporation. It's a nice toll road but it's expensive. Based on your time being worth money.

I know that back east you don't have much choice but to take toll roads if you want to go somewhere.

 

[Slinkytoys]

Yeah, and I will pay to use it because I absolutely HATE driving through Denver!
Slinky

 

[aprophet]

Quote:
I guess I'm back east I have,nt seen a toll road for aprox 30 years musta been in all the wrong places LOL

 

[Two Creeks Farm]

The only good I see coming from the bad economy is it will allow many to realize they cant live beyond their means. Sadly however, the majority will just stay on the same course.

For us, we rely on our land (gardens and deer) to offset the annual grocery budget. My wife works a fulltime job and all the OT she can get, and I work mainly on the weekends from March thru November (photographer). This allows me to work the animals and gardens and do the bulk of the canning and such. We thought ahead enough to buy as much land as we could afford and it allows us to freerange and hopefully we will atleast break even by selling stock and filling the freezers.

IMO, society as a whole has basically prevented many from living like this(off teh land)......but glad to see its making a comeback, even if it is limited.

 

[Dunkopf]

Quote:
I use it almost everyday. Of course my company pays for it. I'm not sure I would use it as much if I had to pay for it. The difference here is that it's a convenience. In the north eastern states (corrected for aprophet) you pretty much have to pay a toll to go quite a few places. Try getting into Manhattan without paying a toll.

Sorry aprophet. When I think of east I think of Maryland up to Mass. I know Va is also east. It is also a much different place than farther up the coast. By the way I've worked in Va quite a bit and I think it's beautiful country as are a lot of states down that way.

 

[Dunkopf]

Quote:
I agree about the society thing. Now is a great time for people with money to buy land. The farther you get away from metro areas the cheaper it is and the more it has fallen in value. At least in CO.

My DFW and I were just talking about Germany yesterday. They have their big cities which are a lot like here. However their smaller towns don't have supermarkets. They all have squares covered in cobblestone where farmers bring their goods to sell every Saturday. They have individual stores for everything. I think that's why their food is tastier. Everything comes straight from the farm to your table. Their smaller towns are usually about six blocks long. They are actually a group of farms built wall to wall with a small shed attached to the rear where they keep cows, chickens, goats pigs and their farming equipment. Then everyday they drive their tractor out to their field and work it. Each town has a Gasthouse where everyone gathers for beer and socializing and everyone knows each other in town. I was there for 2 years and had a car and we did a lot of exploring.

You just don't see that here. Land is too expensive for most people to be able to live off the land without another source of income. Where I live you either commute to Denver or you have a job where you can have a home office. Or you are retired. We moved here 8 years ago and have nothing in savings right now. Our house in the metro area was just as big as this one with a 1/4 acre lot. We love it here, but if we were still living there we could have saved about 150k by now. So I don't see country life as cheaper than city life. It's much better for the kids though.

The economy is absolutely coming back around. IMO it will never be as good as it was in the 90's but that is only because we have lost a lot of jobs that will never come back or if they do they will pay much less. There will be a lot more lower income people for that reason and the people on the other end will have much much more wealth than they did in the 90's. That's the way it goes though. They make the rules and pull all the strings. Hopefully our social safety net will not be dismantled too badly. We'll make it. Just won't be the same as it was.

A lot of people will continue to spend badly. For the time being the credit market has some controls on it to prevent or slow down the greed that brought the country to it's knees. People with no credit or too much credit will find it very hard to get more credit though.

I hear they are expecting at least a temporary drop in gas prices. In the 20 to 40 cents per gallon range. Caused by less demand due to the high prices. That would be nice.

 

[Two Creeks Farm]

I heard today that the Feds are claiming inflation is lower then some figure they compared it to.

I reckon them bean counters dont grocery shop LOL

 

[Dunkopf]

Quote:
Yep. The inflation figures are an average. I have seen groceries broken out before. I'm sure the bean counters grocery shop. They just count beans though. Maybe beans are lower priced.

 

[Q9]

Quote:
Yep. The inflation figures are an average. I have seen groceries broken out before. I'm sure the bean counters grocery shop. They just count beans though. Maybe beans are lower priced.

The Feds don't count the price of food when they measure inflation.

And we wonder why Americans are stereotyped as idiots. Not sure whether to

or

.

IMO, the economy's going to get worse. It's been getting worse, gas prices aren't helping, and I smell another war coming quickly. Inflation is way higher than what the feds claim, and the Federal Reserve is doing what it does best - making things worse.

We are so screwed.